I just saw it tonight. Loved it. Don't wait till the DVD comes out! I never saw "Bottle Rocket," but I think this movie is just as good as "Rushmore," if not better--even beter than "Royal Tenenbaums." At first, the tone of "Aquatic" kind of threw me, especially the first 15 minutes (when Esteban dies off camera). After that, though, I got the point of the film: It's basically a Steve Zissou character arc, with lots of vignettes thrown in.
Check out a recent article on Murray. The part about Murray's Oscar speech reminded me of "Aquatic's" opening segment (the premire of Steve's documentary).
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Bill Murray's cinematic odyssey: From `Caddyshack' to art-house films
Posted on Tue, Jan. 04, 2005
By Hank Stuever, Washington Post
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/movies/10549960.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
NEW YORK - Bill Murray should sell noogies, the kind he used to give Gilda Radner on "Saturday Night Live.'' He'll just put you in a headlock and...bliss.
There's still another reason to adore him: The man does not have a publicist. Here is what you must do if you need to ask Murray to be in your movie or sit for an interview: You call an 800 number. You leave a voice mail. He does not always check these messages.
This is unthinkable in Hollywood. "Nothing. No one,'' huffs an exasperated, disbelieving Touchstone/Disney publicist for the new movie "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,'' starring Murray as a kind of Jacques Cousteau adventurer in a coolly absurd meditation on mid-life crisis.
"They can't stand the idea that someone could get along in life without having a publicist, and they'd all like to have the job,'' Murray says, with a dismissive wave.
The 54-year-old actor sees himself simply as a suburban businessman, husband and father who occasionally makes movies. Sometimes these are classy, independent movies, for which he is paid far less than his customary $8 million or $9 million fee, and sometimes not, as when he provided the lead voice in last summer's "Garfield.''
Murray has walked out of the Ritz hotel at Battery Park, leaving behind a group of peevish reporters and frazzled studio publicists. How wonderfully Bill Murray of Bill Murray to act like this. How lovable, how hangdog -- and also how screw-you.
This is exactly the quality that director Sofia Coppola wanted when she begged Murray to play Bob Harris in "Lost in Translation'': The melancholic edge to his unpredictably manic riffing was allowed to simmer and congeal in his portrayal of an aging star trapped in the antiseptic luxury and weirdness of Tokyo.
Wes Anderson, who directed "The Life Aquatic,'' says of Murray: "He loves to be around people. Everybody feels like they know him, more than any other movie star I know. You walk around with Bill Murray and people just immediately go to him. They feel like they can, and he's OK with that.''
Murray's pre-eminence these days isn't all about art houses. It's also about the Bill Murray that men identify with and revere as a role model. They honor him by doing beery, crooked-jawed routines from "Stripes'' and "Meatballs'' and "Caddyshack.''
It's about the Bill Murray who starred in 1993's "Groundhog Day,'' and has since seen that film take on a profitable afterlife as, of all things, a teaching tool. Corporate trainers use it as a feel-good way to impart business philosophies. People who won't give a whit about "The Life Aquatic'' and thought "Lost in Translation'' was pointless will expound on how "Groundhog Day'' changed their lives, improved their sales, helped them fine-tune their backswing.
At January's Golden Globes ceremony, where he won best performance by an actor in a musical or comedy for "Lost in Translation,'' Murray told the audience he didn't think he was able to give the standard litany-of-phony-gratitude acceptance speech they'd heard all evening, and then deadpanned: "You can all relax. I fired my agents a couple months ago. My trainer, my physical trainer, killed himself.''
And people laughed, nervously, even as it turned out the next morning to be true: Murray had fired his two reps at Creative Artists Agency. His trainer, who'd worked with many celebrities, had killed himself.
"Why would you get up there and bore people?'' Murray asks, later, when we finally get to him and ask him about that speech. "I never have figured that out. These people are supposedly in the entertainment industry, and they finally get up there to that podium and they become the most boring people in the world.''
In the new movie, Steve Zissou is confronted by a man who may be his son. Murray sees little of his own experience as a father coming into his performance. "I never really think about parts that way,'' he says.
What has made him happy, lately?
"I went to the reunion of my grade school graduating class,'' Murray says. "Not the high school reunion, which is a whole different thing, but grade school. St. Joe's. These are the people that I was a little kid with. And nothing's really changed. You go and you really feel happy to have grown up and be alive, and you really feel just completely like yourself. That was one of the greatest times I've ever had, seriously, just being with those people again. Not talking about work or anything. Talking about our kids.''
We talk about the way Anderson's movies look, and wonder what "Caddyshack'' would have looked like if directors like Anderson had been around to give the whole thing a mid-century, WASPy hue.
"These guys know so much more about how they want every last thing to look,'' Murray says. "They speak a whole other language about movies, with all these different references. And they've seen everything.''
And they have somehow coaxed Murray into being a muse, a crank, a sage. At this point, a Touchstone minion comes in and announces time's up.
"Already? Darn,'' Murray deadpans, then laughs.
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